Category: essays

A Small Responsibility

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on

Watch any medical drama (of which there are many–and I admit I’m a sucker for them) and you will doubtless come upon the one where the next of kin struggles to make a decision for the patient who cannot speak for their/him/herself. Should the patient be resucitated? Given a potentially lifesaving treatment despite their prior expressed disinterest in said treatment? Should the patient be taken off life support? High stakes, high drama.

But sometimes the stakes are high but the drama is a little less so.

About fifteen years ago my aunt made me her medical power of attorney. At that time she was a spry young thing of 85, still traveling with her husband, meeting weekly with her French conversation group, cooking in her beautiful small kitchen, reading voraciously, holding ferocious opinions about the world and politics (she would not have been pleased with the outcome of the most recent election). So when she asked, I said “of course.” My brother and I are her closest living relatives, I live nearer than he does–and it’s my aunt. Of course I would do anything she asked, because I adore her.

In the abstract I knew what the job entailed (after all, I have watched a lot of medical dramas). We had a discussion about what amount of medical interference she wanted should she become incapacitated. And then we went back to talking about all the other things in the world, as we always had done.

In the 15 years since then, her husband died after a long and miserable illness, and without that tether–being the organized one who took care of him and saw that everything–appointments, home-care attendants, bills and arrangements and repairs to their home–was organized, she has drifted into dementia, a little like a boat drifting slowly out to sea. The day-to-day business and organization of her medical care is handled by a trust. My responsibility is to visit, to love her… and when the time comes, to make decisions about just how much care is enough.

Last week, just after the election, I flew down to LA for an emergency visit. My aunt had a sudden cascade of health problems. Chest pains proved to be pneumonia, which was leapt on with the power of modern medicine (which is to say, antibiotics–totally permissible under the letter of the power of attorney). The next day her Nurse Practitioner got results for a blood test which said that my aunt’s potassium was low. The level wasn’t critically low yet, but decreasing potassium can be an end-of-life sign, because significantly low potassium can trigger cardiac arrest. I was told to come down from San Francisco ASAP; it was implied that I might be coming to say goodbye.

I got to LA and found my aunt awake, cheerful and chatty, but absolutely opposed to taking the potassium tonic which had been prescribed to reverse that downward trend. Over the next 24 hours I was forcibly reminded of times when I had a sick child who balked at taking medication. You can force a child to take the medicine, because it’s what has to happen–as loathsome as amoxicillin is, leaving strep to proliferate is not an option. But forcing someone to take medicine can have unfortunate side effects: I went through this with my older daughter around shots, and have had to accept that forcing her to get the shot she needed may have contributed to a long-term phobia around needles (she’s much better now, and appears to have forgiven me).

My aunt was adamant that she did not want to take the potassium tonic, which tasted almost catastrophically foul. I don’t blame her for that. But, as with a two year old, I didn’t know how to convince  a woman who is cognitively diminished that she had to take the tonic or she could get sicker. She could die.

This wasn’t a Big TV Medical Drama moment where I had to decide to Turn Off Life Support. This was a small moment where I had to think about the quality of life she wanted. Did I want to get in a wrestling match or force this vile stuff down her throat (a dose every day for the foreseeable), Would she understand that I wasn’t doing this arbitrarily? My aunt may not always remember who I am to her (her memory changes from day to day) but her face lights when I show up; she knows I’m someone who loves her. I didn’t want to deprive her of a sense that she was surrounded by people she could trust.

When we talked about what she wanted, she said she didn’t want machinery deployed. She didn’t want to be kept alive but insensible. No heroic measures. Thinking about it now, I decided that heroically forcing that tonic into her was not something I was okay with. If the point was to make her last days comfortable, force-feeding was not following the letter of her wishes.

That didn’t mean I was averse to skullduggery–in this case, putting a portion of the tonic in chocolate pudding. Which, thank heaven, helped. We fed her bananas (in the normal scheme of things a fine source of potassium, but the NP had been firm that mere bananas would not be sufficient). That, and the amount of tonic we were able to get into her, seemed to do the trick. The next blood test results showed that her potassium was trending upward.

It’s two weeks later, and I’m back for another visit. My aunt appears to be in her usual state of health, recovered from the pneumonia, and able to take her meals at the dining table and watch videos of puppies, which amuse her hugely. The boat is still drifting out to sea, bit by bit. I’m relieved that the decision I made about the medication worked out right. I wonder if in some ways the Big Dramatic Decisions might not be easier, by the very nature of what they are. The small decisions can be just as fraught.

How Was Your Convention?

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on
The American Falls

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Niagara Falls Sheraton (US side) waiting until it’s time to get a ride to the airport to go home. It’s the tail-end–or perhaps the last sight of the tail-end–of the World Fantasy Convention, which was swell. At least MY convention was swell. But as one of the attendees commented this morning, everyone has their own convention; I can’t speak to anyone else’s.

As with every human endeavor, how we experience an event is colored by what we want out of it, what our individual concerns are, and what happens to us individually. The people planning a convention can be as meticulous in planning as one could want, filling the schedule chock-full of entertaining and informative and cool stuff–but for the individual attendee all that can be eclipsed by any number of things: a friend who ghosted them; a bad knee; the bad dinner; missing someone who is normally there… you know. Human stuff. And it is a Truth, universally acknowledged, that even at a relatively small convention like WFC (which hovers around 1000 registrations) you can run into some people over and over, and miss other people that you know are there, but never find.

Of course, this principle applies to everything: school, workplace, relationships, families (I swear my brother and I had two different families with shared players and specific events, mediated by our ages and genders). It’s not a matter of position, exactly. It’s a matter of what matters to you, how you’re treated, what distracts or focuses you in a given situation.

So how was my convention? I saw many people, some I hadn’t seen in years (including one of my stage-combat teachers and colleagues: it had been 30 years!).  I met cool new people, or people I only know from the realms of the internet. I ate (Indian, Nepali, Italian, and more quotidian fare) and talked and laughed and listened. I visited a foreign land (with Canada within a 15 minute walk across the Rainbow Bridge, how could I not?). But mostly, I talked and listened and laughed and thought about things in new ways, which is really what I go to conventions for. I had beadwork in the Art Show (every time is new–last year my climate change necklaces all sold; this year none of them did) and a gratifying number of pieces went home with new owners.

It’s a huge indulgence, being able to do this: go to Another Place, see friends, and talk about the issues and ideas that writers worry about and gnaw on. I’m very lucky to have the time and the finances and the flexibility to be able to do it at all. But I also spent a good deal of time talking with some people in indie publishing, and now have –maybe not a publishing plan, but enough hard information to be able to put together a publishing plan so that the 4th Sarah Tolerance book can see the light of day, and I can bring out the backlist in a uniform edition. I call that a successful business trip.

Short answer: My Convention was good. Now to go home and start the real work.

In Praise of Community Music

personby Deborah J. Ross
schedulePosted on

Until not that long ago, music was a participant event. Everyone in the village gathered to sing, play handmade instruments, and dance. If you were especially skilled, you received recognition (and maybe a few rounds of free ale or whatever passed for it). I grew up in the era of folk music, where almost everyone I knew had a guitar, banjo, recorder, or equivalent instrument. Maybe a dulcimer, castanets, or lap harp. Sure, we went to concerts, but we made our own music, too. For the last couple of centuries, folks who could afford it had a harpsichord, clavichord, pianoforte, as well as a harp (ref. any Jane Austen novel or film). Composers wrote for their patrons (or their patrons’ families), music simple enough for an amateur to enjoy playing. Even with the shift through recorded media to professional concert music (everything from symphonies to metallica), folks continue to enjoy playing music. Perhaps it’s a bug they catch in high school band or orchestra. Perhaps their moms forced them into piano or clarinet lessons and they found themselves wanting to play long after lessons went by the wayside.

So I’m not at all surprised at the popularity of community music groups. Amateur choral groups, whether associated with religious institutions or not. Recorder ensembles playing Christmas music. Church choirs. Community bands or string ensembles—after all, where else are those band members or not-quite-good-enough-for-professional violinists going to find kindred spirits and have fun?

My husband, a clarinetist, played in a community band comprised of retired musically inclined folks and high school seniors or graduates, plus two for-credit community college bands. The “symphonic band” in particular drew from current students and ordinary folks. I used to love attending these concerts, well within our budget (aka, free). They varied in quality but it was always clear how much fun the musicians were having.

Fast forward through the pandemic and waning interest…to a sign outside one of the tiny churches in our tiny town: “Concert!” Of course, even at the requisite 25 mph, I couldn’t catch the date and time. Then my piano teacher said, “I’m playing the piano solo at the church, you should come.” I came. I sat where I had a good view of her hands. The church held maybe a hundred people, but the acoustics were marvelous. I went back for a second concert, although I had the same problem finding out when the performances were. At last, I found the website for the “Concertino Strings,” showed up for a performance, and had a marvelous time.

The directors, Joanne Tanner and Renata Bratt, did a brilliant job selecting music that was fun to play, within the skill level of their musicians, and delightful to listen to. This last concert included:

  • Don Quixote Suite; A Burlesque, by G. P. Telemann
  • Gigue, by J. Pachelbel (the one written to go with his famous Canon in D)
  • Pachelbel’s Rhapsody, by Katie O’Hara LaBrie

As Renata Bratz pointed out, we have all heard Pachelbel’s Canon in D umpteen times, although few of us have shared the experience of the cellists, who play the same 8 notes over…and over…and over. Maybe that was what LaBrie had in mind when she arranged a delightful blend of Pachelbelian themes in a sprightly modern setting. I came home and looked it up online. You can enjoy it, too!

The next concert is December 11 and 14, featuring Sammartini’s Concerto Grosso “Christmas.”

 

I’m late!

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I’m late with everything this week. Part of this is because the year is always crazy busy when the last term of everything educational in Australia collides with Jewish holidays. This year is worse because most people are ignoring the Jewish side of things or make snide remarks about Jews. I’m lucky that so far it’s only been snide remarks and veiled bigotry. These remarks become time consuming. They may be harmless, but given the current environment they could also be hiding dangerous bigotry. it’s not entirely safe to be Jewish most places right now. I need to check those remarks out. It’s the sensible thing to do. Earlier this year they led me to a bunch of evidence that one of our major political parties is strongly antisemitic. I keep checking this out, because I really don’t want to believe it and this week I discovered again, that not only am I right, they’re putting forward candidates who don’t hide these views. My local elections (the equivalent of state and council combined) are this Saturday, and I have factored this into how I vote. The party have gone, over the last few years, from having candidates near or at the top of my ballot to being buried deep inside the “Please don’t elect this person” part of it.
Also, I tested my capacity to dance yesterday. I did better than I expected, but I’ve been paying for it ever since. I go back to folk dancing next year, all going well. My teacher wanted me to go back properly now, but there will be issues with joints if I do that. Also, I would be dancing on the Jewish anniversary of the day of the Nova massacre, in a class that has put Israeli folk dances on hold. That would be a lot to handle, I think.
Add all this to work stuff and health stuff and I’m in Red Queen month and running very hard to just keep up.

I hope these are sufficient reasons for being a day and a half late!

Three Stories

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on

Note: This was published here about three years ago. I’m reposting it because we cannot underestimate the stakes in the election that is coming up. Not just the Presidential election, but everything up and down the ballot.

There are, I suppose, as many different stories about why and how a woman gets an abortion as there are women.

Here’s one: In the bad old days before Roe, my mother once drove a friend from New York City to a parking lot in New Jersey, where her friend got into a waiting car. Five hours later the car returned, her friend got out (sheet white and trembling, but okay), got in my mother’s car, and they drove back to the city. She went on with her life, with what residual emotion from the experience I don’t know; I do know my mother was deeply shaken by her small part in it.

And another: I remember several girls in college who got pregnant, before and after Roe. After Roe some things were the same: the secrecy, the collections taken up to help defray the cost, the sympathetic pampering when the girl returned to the dorm. But some things were very different: before Roe there was a well of secret knowledge–all I knew was that someone knew someone who knew a real doctor… and the rest of the process was shrouded in mystery, not as dire or scary as my mother’s friend’s experience, but sufficiently clandestine. After Roe, if memory serves, you had to cross the state line to reach a state where the procedure was legal. But there were official resources on campus which could explain and expedite the process. Still expensive, still vaguely clandestine, but without the gloss of criminality which made a bad situation terrifying.

And one more: mine. Continue reading “Three Stories”…

Do Not Murder In My Name: The Rush to Execution

personby Deborah J. Ross
schedulePosted on

Today it feels appropriate to repost my essay on my opposition to the death penalty as a family member of a murder victim. This is from 2020.

 

Now, in the waning days of 2020, the criminal in the White House has pushed through a string of murders. I realize I have used inflammatory language, but nothing less conveys the intensity of my outrage and revulsion. Simply put, someone who initiates and demands the ending of a human life is a criminal. The deliberate, calculated, cold-blooded taking of a human life is murder.

 

From the BBC: 

As President Donald Trump’s days in the White House wane, his administration is racing through a string of federal executions.

Five executions are scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden’s 20 January inauguration – breaking with an 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.

And if all five take place, Mr Trump will be the country’s most prolific execution president in more than a century, overseeing the executions of 13 death row inmates since July of this year.

The five executions began this week, starting with convicted killer 40-year-old Brandon Bernard who was put to death at a penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The execution of 56-year-old Alfred Bourgeois will take place on the evening of 11 December.

I am the family member of a murder victim, and I speak from personal experience of the impulse to revenge the taking of my mother’s life. I also know that this is a natural expression of grief, and that with healing, it passes. To me it is essential that those left behind be given the support and time to process that loss and to re-engage with their lives. To focus on killing someone else freezes us in retaliation mode.

Over the years, I have spoken out against the death penalty, telling my story to groups as diverse as city councils, law students, death penalty abolition activists, and state legislators. In 2012, I was invited to participate in an international conference put on by Murder Victim Families For Human Rights. Then I met others like me, who had lost a single family member to violence, those whose loved ones had been executed or were on death row, and those who experienced both. Every single person who had experienced both was Black. There is no escaping the racial injustice in the way the death penalty is applied (or the way crimes are investigated and prosecuted). Yet the most moving part of that weekend was listening with an open heart to mothers weeping for their executed sons — and realizing their grief and loss was no less than mine. 

If you, who are reading this, take away nothing else, remember this: every person who is put to death is or has been loved by someone, and is grieved by someone, and missed like an aching hole in the heart by someone.

In 2019, I penned a blog for Death Penalty Focus, called “When we focus on revenge instead of healing, we never heal.” You can read it below.

Continue reading “Do Not Murder In My Name: The Rush to Execution”…

How Feminism Killed Cooking

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on

This is something I posted on my own website four years ago. Just re-read it and thought I’d post it here.

I read an article on Salon a few years ago: “Is Michael Pollan a Sexist Pig?” by a writer named Emily Matchar. The title is, of course, very tongue in cheek; the article is about the omnivore/ locavore/ femivore movements, and about the myths we make up about the past. In this case, the past in question is the good ol’ days of cookery from the writers’ childhoods, and how much better everything was in the days before feminism led us to processed food.

Now, all things being equal I like to make my food from scratch, I love the farmer’s market, I do read labels, and I attempt not to buy things that I can make myself. But I do these things because I’d just as soon know what I’m eating, because I have family members with nasty allergies. I don’t do them as a political statement. I’m fortunate that I can afford to buy organic at least some of the time, that I have the time and the leisure to cook the way I prefer to. And oh yeah: I like to cook. Not everyone does. Not everyone likes to eat, for that matter. There are people who regard food as fuel, something they have to be prodded to remember. (I know: bizarre, right?)

Full disclosure: for a potluck at the time I made a chocolate tart with gingersnap crust, and a jam tart, and (possibly) some truffles made with leftover ganache. Because I am insane, but also because doing this stuff is fun. For me. As it is for many people in the “femivore” movement, which started out about making food (or raising chickens, or gardening or baking bread) as craft or art. But an awful lot of the omnivore/locavore/femivore rhetoric is distinctly anti-Feminist (seriously, go read the article, particularly the quotes from the like of Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan, and Marguerite Manteau-Rao). In looking for a more “authentic” diet are these writers valorizing a time that never was?

Look at many of the cookbooks from the 30s, 40s, and 50s (never mind the 60s, when I, and many of the writers, were kids) and they’re full of short-cuts: use canned soup, top your casserole with deep-fried onion strings, use prepared ketchup or mayonnaise or Jell-O™ or corn flakes or instant oats. Use instant pudding. Use frozen spinach (or, even scarier, canned spinach. Have you ever had canned spinach? It’s like eating soggy green tissues). A decade before Betty Friedan put pen to paper to discuss the feminine mystique, ads in womens’ magazines touted wash-day miracles and labor-saving devices and wonderful, wonderful processed food. Because doing this stuff wasn’t a creative outlet. It was work.

There used to be a rhyme that outlined a woman’s work week: Monday (when you were rested up from your day of rest and going to church on Sunday) was laundry day. Laundry was a brutal task, involving boiling and stirring or wringing and hanging of an entire household’s clothes and linens. Tuesday was ironing day (yes, you put the iron on the stove to heat it, or on the coals of your fire if you didn’t have a stove, and yes, those irons were made of iron and weighed a young ton). Wednesday: sewing day, making your own clothes and clothes for your family, repairing, darning, stitching new sheets (yes, women hemmed and darned their sheets). Thursday: marketing, getting all the things that you couldn’t make, to last you a week. Friday: cleaning. Scrubbing on your hands and knees, polishing, beating rugs, dusting, scouring. Finally, Saturday, baking–for the week. All those pies and cake and breads–which explains a lot of recipes using “stale bread,” since by the end of the week whatever bread was left was likely to be rock-hard. And Sunday, like every day, three times a day: feed the family.

Whatever the rhetoric of feminism, women didn’t want frozen food, store-bought bread, and labor-saving devices because feminism told them they were being oppressed. They wanted these things because their work was really, really difficult and time consuming and exhausting. If these things freed some women up to do other things–run Hewlett Packard or become Secretary of State or write science fiction, that wasn’t the point. The point was to get out from under all that backbreaking, repetitive work.

Valorization of a better, simpler, more wholesome time drives me nuts. Because it’s fantasy. I love the gorgeous, candy-colored rendition of small-town turn of the last century Iowa in The Music Man, but I don’t confuse that with real life, which included diptheria, weevil-ly flour, bedbugs, and food that often teetered on the edge of spoiled. Taking on some of the tasks of yesterday, while using some of the tools of today to avoid the nastier work, and disdaining people who cannot or don’t want to do the same, is a mug’s game. It makes it all about aesthetics, when what most people 100 years ago, and many people today, are worrying about is survival.

Eat what you love, eat what is healthy, eat what you can afford and what you feel good about. Cook or eat out or call for a pizza. Grow tomatoes, spin flax, make poetry or pottery or raise llamas for the wool. It’s all good. But don’t blame Betty Friedan if you don’t like what’s for dinner.

Returning Home

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

My everyday was so much easier in Germany. Antisemitism didn’t play silly buggers with the ground I walked on there, as it does in Australia. Australian antisemitism is mostly gentle and kind, but no less troublesome for that. Until I went to Germany I had no idea of its place in the general scheme of things, but now I understand that, too. Five weeks where I could literally be myself taught me that I am not the heart of the problem. Nor is me being Jewish. I know about what is wrong with Australia and why bigotry triumphs right now. Around me, many people are raging about Nazis, but doing nothing about the gentler and more insidious racism. Whatever I do to handle this will be uncomfortable, and if I don’t do anything I will also be uncomfortable.

How did Germany teach me these things?

It still has all the history that cause the Shoah. It’s dealt with some of it supremely well, and other parts not at all. My research project concerned how Germany handles its Jewish past, especially the past up to 1700. I explained I wasn’t a German historian, but a French/English one. I was entirely open about my Jewishness, but also about the parts my family played in the war. There were no closed doors. In fact, it was quite the opposite. People wanted to talk to me and tell me their views and hear what I had to say. They were excited by my questions and chased things up for me: we all know a lot more about Jews in the Saarland, about the relationship between lebuchen and honeycake, about the Jews who never returned to Germany, about medieval expulsions and why they were not always as they seemed, about Roman Jews in Germania… and a whole lot more. There will be a book. In fact, nearly half the book is already written (and needs a publisher!) but this post is not about that book.

I was able to use my experience to better understand the 1930s in Germany and why so many non-Jewish Germans were silent then. Also why everyone’s favourite patriotic children’s author was murdered. The murder was death camp stuff: tragically normal that year. The silence, however, was mostly not intentional. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of non-Jewish Germans did not hate Jews and are still trying to handle what happened. Many people closed doors for emotional safety because life was too full of problems. Small lives became smaller lives. Some of them closed doors to keep out people (Jews, Roma, people with the wrong politics or sexual preferences) who might make their own lives more difficult in a chancy decade. There was fear; there was selfishness; there was small life syndrome. The actual hatred was confined to a much tinier portion of the community than we mostly think.

Those who accepted the Nazis, or got on with their lives despite the Nazis are perfectly normal people. Good people who mostly led good lives. They silenced those around them without hate (or with only a little hate, not enough to murder or throw stones) and when the worst happened were terribly shocked. I learned a lot about things from how shocked people were and how, three generations later, they are still determined to fight and ensure this does not happen again. They are still dealing with their families being a part of the horror. Good people who discovered that goodness is not enough by itself, that silencing and closing doors and leading small lives can feed terror.

Australians are doing the small life thing to most Jewish Australians. I’m largely not dealing with hate. Three people I know well clearly hate me because I’m Jewish, only three, out of hundreds. The occasional hate mail is just that – an occasional nasty piece of email from a nasty piece of work. Most of the others who make my life more and more difficult are agreeing with politics that silences or isolates (why I am so worried about the Aussie Greens – anyone who backs them without pushing them to talk to the Jewish community as a whole is helping close doors) or they are dealing with impossible situations personally and do not have energy left to find out why I’m missing from this place or that, or… there are a number of other possibilities, but they all come down to preferring small lives above shared lives.

The biggest thing I noticed in Germany was how much easier life is when one doesn’t have to do a bunch of work to be heard. In Australia, I have to run an extra mile before anyone will listen to me, because I have to prove I’m someone who deserves a little attention. I have to open closed doors. Some of the once-open doors are locked and I have to beg for a key. All attention I previously had for my books, my classes,Women’s History Month, and a truckload of other things is immaterial to the world around me. at home Bookshops do not stock my books. Reviewers won’t review my books. And this applies to the vast, vast majority of Jewish writers.  In Germany, scholars and students looked at my books and my work. My life’s work is important and interesting. I could also talk openly about my research and its impact and everyone talked openly back. Me being Gillian is sufficient.

I’m not going to spend the rest of my life contacting politicians and people I used to work with and social activists who knew me, once upon a time. I wrote to them when I could before I left, and they never answered. I am still the person who can give excellent policy advice on these things. More so now, in fact, because of my current research. I’m still the person who spent twenty odd years of her life fighting for human rights for many people, and teaching people how to fight for themselves. I am an expert they need to talk to, but their doors are closed. Those politicians and activists and most of Australia’s left have chosen small lives. If someone doesn’t bother to read my email because I’m no longer the right person or the known person, or assumes that someone else will be more acceptable, then that’s their choice. All those choices have been made. I will not write any more letters.

If someone wants to talk with me, I am still the expert I once was. I discovered this is Germany. I don’t teach what one has to do to prevent or limit the spread of bigotry: I teach how things happen and tools that can be used. Choices and paths are for the person dealing with it in their every day. I once made a living providing history and understanding and tools, and had completely forgotten about that part of my life, because of the amount that part of my life has been sidelined. Right now, just getting to see anyone and get a decent conversation that may or may not lead to changes is like running a marathon. To run marathons, one needs spoons. I’m chronically ill. Another thing I discovered in Germany is that one can lead a much better life with a chronic illness if one doesn’t have to battle to be heard.

I’m still very happy to help anyone deal with identification of bigotry, whether they are themselves unintentionally excluding, how cultural tendencies push towards how we see people. However, I’m not well, and I’m not willing to spend all my energy explaining why I can be useful (very, very useful) at this moment in Australia’s history. I tried that, and it took all my energy with no results. I left thinking that I was not the person I thought I was, and had nothing useful to give. Now I realise, thanks to the last five weeks, that it is Australia that has changed and that I am simply one of many people dealing with the downside of that change. Being Jewish is my everyday, but that everyday results in closed doors. Much of Australia is quietly and gently hiding itself from anything that might cause it emotional distress, and one of those subjects if being Australian and Jewish. Simple descriptions are applied to us and who we are and how we live our lives is not considered something worth knowing.

If you want to talk to me about these things, and the shape of prejudice in society and how to handle different manifestations of that prejudice, then I’m happy to help. Ask me. Don’t wait for me to find you. If you want to scold me for being Jewish or thinking Jewishly or keep me out of things until I know my (polite and submissive) place, then you’re not seeing me.

If you want to know who is pushing me aside in this way, just look at groups of people or events I have been involved with in the past. If I’m not there, ask the event people why. I am not given reasons why – I’m just excluded – so I can’t speak for them.

If I am at an event and especially if I’m talking about things that matter to me, then please celebrate, for the people organising that event are not closing doors. They’re not taking the lazy path into bigotry. Their lives are bigger than this.

 

PS For those who are curious, I was a Research Fellow at Heinrich Heine University for a month, and was doing research supported by Deakin University. I owe both universities a great deal, for helping me understand the incomprehensible.

Mysteries

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I don’t know how to say this, but I’m going home this week. I don’t know what I will do in my last little time in Germany, but I do know the flight back home to Canberra (3 flights, one of which is just under 14 hours long) is a total pain. Even with the best service and the nicest staff… it’s too long. So think of me this week. I’ll be bereft at my great adventure finishing, and then I have to get home. One good thing. I left home in midwinter. As I type this blogpost, it’s -2 degrees outside. 28.4F, for those who need Fahrenheit. I am going into summer. And when I leave Germany, I will be heading into spring.

I marvel at this kind of change every time I travel. My favourite is, of course, the once I traveled from Sydney to Los Angeles. I then went on to Houston, where my book tour began, but the Sydney to LA was the magic bit. I arrived earlier than I had left…

It’s Friday the Thirteenth!

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

My father would be 106 today, if he were still with us. It’s also Friday the thirteenth and in fact he was born on a Friday the thirteenth. I looked it up once just in case this was just one of those family stories, and found it was true.

My parents also got married on a Friday the thirteenth.  I looked that one up, too. It was our family joke – Friday the thirteenth was our lucky day.

Given that in this, the wealthiest country in the world, a place full of supposedly educated people, hotels (and possibly many other tall buildings) do not include a thirteenth floor, deciding that Friday the thirteenth is your lucky day is a small rebellion. Or a small statement of sanity.

Or, at least, out of step. My family was always a little out of step.

There is always at least one Friday the thirteenth in a given year, according to math wizards. 1918, when my father was born, had two, though the year my parents got married only had one. Every once in awhile there are three.

So obviously a reasonable number of people are born on a Friday the thirteenth – probably about the same number as are born on a Friday the first or any other day of the month (except 29, 30, and 31, since there are fewer of those in a year).

I suspect fewer get married on Friday the thirteenth for the same reason that tall buildings label the thirteenth floor the fourteenth. Continue reading “It’s Friday the Thirteenth!”…